20. – 22.4. Avant Garde Film Workshop

Avant Garde FilmWorkshop with Paul Prendergast

A three day workshop as an introduction to, historical analysis of and detailed exploration of Avant Garde Film Production, focusing on the films, filmmakers and film movements that have defined Avant Garde film production over the last century and continue to define the movement today.
A particular emphasis will be placed on Avant Garde film as a subversive art and its articulation as an anti establishment filmmaking process.

Many of the films discussed will be accompanied by Detailed Film Viewing Sessions.

Some of the workshops aims include:
Introducing participants to a detailed overview of Avant Garde Film production; its concepts, aesthetics, techniques and ideologies.
Exposing the participants to rarely seen avant garde films.

Through discussions about and viewing sessions of these Avant Garde Films that this exposure may act as a creative catalyst to encourage participants to create Avant Garde work of their own.
The workshop will not be conducted in a chronologically linear fashion but will instead focus in on and make thematic connections between particular critical sub genres of the Avant Garde film movement. This approach will assist in clarifying the connections or otherwise between much earlier produced avant garde film production and more contemporary Avant Garde practice today.

Some of the Avant Garde sub genres to be discussed will be:
Futurist Cinema Manifesto
The Revolutionary Russian Avant Gardists
Surrealist Cinema
European Avant Garde Filmmakers of the 1920s and 1930s
Experimental Animation
The Post War American Avant Gardes
Experimental Documentary Forms
The US avant gardes of the 1950s and 1960s
Metaphoric Cinema
The European Avant Gardes of the 1960s and 1970s
Underground Film
Found Footage and Collage filmmakers
Expanded Cinema
Structural Film
Feminist film
The Cinema of Transgression
Avant Garde in the 21st century – where are we now? – The digital revolution

Films, Filmmakers and Film movements will be further explored under these headings:
Avant Garde Art movements and their influence on the Avant Garde Cinema Aesthetic
As a counterpoint to the traditional and established mainstream Hollywood narrative – D W Griffiths
Approaches and Technical processes in making Avant Garde films and its expressions thereof.

Paul Prendergast is an experimental filmmaker and a lecturer of film and video production. He has worked successfully in varied strands of the film and video production field including commercial videography, documentary, live theatre, independent experimental, artist films and music video production. He has taught in universities and educational institutions in both Ireland and Germany. His theoretical fields of expertise includes Avant Garde Cinema and Documentary film. He also organizes workshops on the practice of creative film and video editing and motion graphic design. Paul divides his time between Ireland and Berlin and is a member of the Berlin based music, art and film organizations Salon Bruit and Labor Berlin.